2009's Most Powerful Fashion Magazine Editors

There's a scene in director R.J. Cutler's fashion documentary The September Issue in which Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour lunches with Neiman Marcus Group Chief Executive Burt Tansky. Wintour and her team tell Tansky that they've relayed to fashion designer Miuccia Prada that the fabric she used for a particular dress was too heavy for everyday wear; Prada has agreed to use a lighter-weight fabric in order to please Wintour as well as retailers like Tansky.

Tansky then asks Wintour if she can push designers to send shipments to the stores on time (many labels are known for shaky logistical operations). She says she'll see what she can do--reinforcing her position as one of the most powerful women not only in fashion, but in the $200 billion U.S. clothing and accessories retail industry.

The September Issue was filmed in 2007, before the recession fully took hold (and before magazine advertising sales began to plummet and consumers stopped buying so many handbags, dresses and shoes). Two years later, Wintour is still at the top of her game.

Her contract at publishing dinosaur Condé Nast remains purportedly unsigned and advertising sales at Vogue are down 26% during the first half of 2009 (from 2008), yet Wintour has managed to spearhead the publicity for the documentary and also serve as the face of Fashion's Night Out, a series of high-profile, celebrity-saturated fashion events taking place on the evening Sept. 10 across the globe.

To compile our list of the America's most influential fashion editors, we considered the top editor of every monthly U.S.-based magazine that features a significant amount of fashion editorial, including teen magazines.

Monthly unique user numbers for each Web site, provided by comScore, told us how well each editor's title is transitioning from print to the online format. We also looked at advertising revenue from the first half of 2009 and compared it with revenue from the first half of 2008; both were culled from the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB), a division of the Magazine Publishers of America. The number of advertising pages for the first half of 2009 compared to the first half of 2008, also from PIB, was another factor.

We also considered the year-over-year change in circulation for the first half of 2009, provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. These measurements told us how many people are sure to read the magazine each month and how much advertisers are willing to pay to capture the attention of those readers.

Finally, we calculated the number of times each editor's name was found in Factiva and on
Google
Blog Search over the year ending on Aug. 31, 2009. These media mentions were particularly important in 2009, as nearly every editor on our list has pushed hard for more publicity as the economy--and ad sales--slipped. All factors were ranked and then averaged for a final ranking.

Besides Wintour's September Issue media blitz, which included an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, most of these editors--or their underlings--play a role on a reality television series. For instance, Bazaar's Glenda Bailey and Seventeen's Ann Shoket have appeared on Bravo's The Fashion Show and the CW's America's Next Top Model, respectively.

Perhaps the savviest small-screen editor is Marie Claire's Joanna Coles, who moved up one spot to No. 9. Coles' choice to hire Project Runway judge Nina Garcia as fashion director in May 2008 and her decision to allow camera crews into the editorial offices via The Style Network's reality series Running in Heels elevated the magazine's profile. What's more, Marie Claire is sponsoring season six of Project Runway on Lifetime, which premiered on Aug. 20 with 4.2 million viewers--a record in the network's 25-year history.

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But regardless of the amount of publicity these glossies are receiving--and the influence their editors appear to be accumulating--there's no denying that each editor's public relations power struggle could be a race for survival rather than a battle for the throne. The magazine industry as a whole is struggling mightily; over the first half of 2009 magazine advertising dollars dwindled by 21% to $9.8 billion, according to the Publisher's Information Bureau.

But while online publications are becoming increasingly important, that doesn't necessarily mean they're taking business from print media, says Samir Husni, Ph.D., director at the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism. "None of these ads went to the Web, they just disappeared," he says. While he believes that magazines may never be as inflated as they once were, that doesn't mean that they--and their editors--will become totally irrelevant, either. Not if they do one important thing, that is.

"Editors need to ensure that the content in their magazines and online properties is both sufficient and relevant." Husni says. "If it's neither of those things, then yes, you're going to die."